


Basement Lights

by mageofpie



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Blood, F/M, Gore, Graphic Description, Torture, but i wanted to write so here it is, hah yeah i know im sorry, the murder matrimony fic no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:44:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7715341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mageofpie/pseuds/mageofpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>10 missing people within a 10 mile radius. There had to be a link.</p><p>Detective Jack Fiddler is given a seemingly impossible case to solve and is almost ready to give up, until a corpse shows up on an old woman's lawn and the weird couple across the street seem to know more than they should.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 10 Miles

**Author's Note:**

> i should preface this with a disclaimer that i have no idea how the police system works or how the human body works and literally everything i know comes from watching rizzoli and isles
> 
> this is basically a fic based on an au that i made with some friends a while back where chris and ashley are a serial killer couple and i've been meaning to write this since christmas which just shows you how lazy i am since now literally half the fandoms fucking gone
> 
> also made this au cause i love chrashley and i love killer couple (in fiction, obviously) and idk this is mainly self indulgent but if anyone else liked this too that'd be rad

Cigar smoke lay stagnant in the air as the occupant of the car stared at the house across the street with grim patience. He took another drag from his current cigar and held it for a beat, savouring the flavour. The other guys at the station, those who weren’t scared of him, often laughed that he still smoked the outdated things but he was a creature of habit and comfort; so what if he had to shell out a little extra so he could have a decent smoke?

He clenched his teeth around the dwindling stub as another flake of ash fell off and onto his lap. He tutted and brushed it off, yanking the butt out of his mouth and stuffing it into the ashtray he had behind the gear shift. It was already spilling over. Keeping his eyes glued to the pristine house, the veteran detective reached over to his glove compartment and fished out another Cuban cigar, pressing in his cigarette lighter on the way back. His car was an old enough model that it still _had_ a cigarette lighter.

They also helped him concentrate which, to be fair, if it was any other stakeout, he wouldn’t need to but this particular case he’d been working on for months and the details of it were gruesome enough for him to dedicate the whole of his attention to it.

He’d had a thin file slapped down onto his desk on a slow day after complaining to the captain that he never got anything interesting to work on after losing sight in his right eye when he’d cornered a knife happy perp.

“String of disappearances,” he’d said. “Never been solved, and I don’t think you’re about to crack it either but since you’re so eager to have work to do…”

A ripple of laughter went through the office and he’d grumbled curses while flicking through the pages.

10 people missing, all of them within 10 miles of each other and all of them already in the stations computer system whether that be on the sex offenders list or for abuse charges.

Someone clearly thought they were a vigilante with the god given right to deciding who should die and why. Of course, none of the bodies had ever been recovered so death wasn’t the official statement but Jack knew. He’d hadn’t been on the force this long not to know that missing people either turned up dead, or didn’t turn up at all. Especially in cases like these where there were so many incidents.

He was determined to solve this thing, if not just to have bragging rights against all those fuckers who’d laughed at him for getting this “impossible” case. The lighter made a metallic clanging noise as it popped out and Jack quickly pressed it against the end of his cigar and took a long drag.

He’d asked the captain who had looked at the case before him and he’d scoffed at every name listed. All of them were young and inexperienced, at least he thought so. Most of them had barely made it through the academy and somehow managed to land a job as homicide detectives and someone had thought it a good idea to give the fresh faced youths something as challenging as a 10-person disappearance. Some of them had even taken the liberty of shoving their own scrawled notes in with the official paperwork. All of them seemed to think this had some link to a drug or trafficking ring but Jack had rolled his eyes and crumpled the unwelcome notes into a tight ball and tossed them into the trash.

It wasn’t impossible, they’d just never given this case to the right guy.

But it didn’t matter how good of a detective he was or how many years of experience he had under his belt or how many cases he’d cracked before because no matter where he turned he was met with dead end after dead end; whatever family member of the victims he could get a hold of that weren’t estranged or off the radar completely either hung up after he said who he was and why he was calling or told him, in many creative ways, how he should go fuck himself.

There was a point where he almost gave up, where the stress of it all almost got to him, the humiliation of being stumped for so long being too much.

Until _he_ turned up.

It was early morning but he’d been up for hours already, going over the file again and the few pages he’d managed to add to it while searching for answers. He was at the station, his desk flooded with notes; coffee mugs sat half full and cold after he’d forgotten about them and gotten up to make another; stacks of unfinished paperwork graced almost every other available surface; and sticky notes hung around his dusty computer monitor like out-of-season Christmas lights. He was the only person in the office who didn’t have any keepsakes on his desk, no photos or anything; mainly because there wasn’t any room on there, but also because he didn’t have any or see the need for them. The only sound was the ticking of the analogue clock on the wall and the cars outside, the occasional rumble of a truck.

It had been one of those nights where he couldn’t sleep, laying in his bed in his dingy apartment, staring at the water damaged ceiling, over thinking shit. Every thought that went through his head he’d already had and disproved; there was no drug or prostitution ring, there was no government conspiracy or FBI cover ups or any of that crazy paranoid shit. The fact that he’d even considered that an option at one point made him groan and throw an arm over his eyes. There was no point in him being awake if he wasn’t doing anything, so here he was. Again. At his desk with the same damn file.

The phone on his desk rang shrill, piercing the relative silence and scaring the absolute shit out of him. He set down yet another mug of freshly poured, almost spilt coffee and slapped a hand against the phone, gripping it tightly but not picking it up just yet. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed out of it, closing his eyes as the beginnings of a headache began. He picked up the phone.

“Detective Fiddler.” His name substituted a greeting.

As the other officer was telling him the address of the body and what was happening he was already standing up to leave and grunted out affirmations, flipping the file closed and reaching for his coat.

* * *

Jack stood just beyond the perimeter of police tape that surrounded the house of the old woman who’d called in about a dead body she’d found on her front lawn as she went out to get the mail. The dispatching officer had asked how she knew he was dead and she’d said because there was a giant pool of blood leaking out of him, and all over her flower bed too, she wept.

Puffing on another cigar, he swept his eyes across the small cul-de-sac and took note of it, noticing the blandness of it. These people probably hadn’t been expecting anything like this to happen in such a sleepy neighbourhood. It wasn’t in the shittiest of suburbs but it wasn’t anything spectacular either; all identical houses with small, personal touches in each of the front lawns, trying to have some semblance of individuality. Some of the homeowners had already made their way outside and were muttering to each other, trying to lean as far as they could over the tape to try and get a look at the gnarly scene just a few feet away from it. Jack could see those who hadn’t come outside to look were peering through their windows, trying to hide kids eyes from view or turning their heads occasionally and relaying the scene to someone else he couldn’t see.

Some uniforms were trying to break up the gathering of people around the police tape but they weren’t making much progress. Jack huffed and flicked the cigar butt to the ground, snuffing it out with his boot and striding over to the tape, lifting it as he walked.

He could see the old woman still being questioned at her door and the medical examiner kneeling down next to the body. She wasn’t wrong about the huge pool of blood.

Wincing at the sight as he got closer, Jack crouched down next to the body and tried not to let the smell make him gag. He’d been to some pretty nasty crime scenes in his years but this would probably make it in his top 10.

The guy, whoever he was, looked to be in his early to mid-20’s, and he like he’d seen better days. Jack could see footprints in the grass where he’d stumbled around before collapsing onto his back where the brunt of his injuries could face out into the world for everyone to see. Just by glancing at him Jack could see the extensive bruising and dried blood all over him, there was barely an inch of skin that wasn’t covered. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see Annie glance up at him and he nodded in greeting.

“So… what can you tell me, doc?” Jack muttered, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves that were handed to him over his shoulder.

Cline flicked her eyes over to him and sighed, leaning back from rummaging around in the pockets of this guy’s jeans, the only article of clothing he had on, “Well, estimated time of death looks to be 3am this morning. He’s got burns and lacerations all over his body and these ones in his chest,” she gestured with her pinkie finger at the recognisable shape carved sloppily into his chest, “have been done in the shape of hearts.”

“Romantic.” Jack deadpanned.

“Ain’t it just? As well at that,” she again gestured to another wound further down his torso and traced it, “it looks like he’s had one of his kidney’s removed, but I’ll have to check for sure when I get him back to the lab.”

“Any ID on him?”

“Nope, and it looks like his finger prints have been burnt off too, so, if none of the other people on this street know who he is, we’ll have to go for dental records since the old lady has no idea.”

“Fuck.”

She laughed humourlessly, “But wait, there’s more.” Annie shuffled towards the head and tilted it up, “Both his eyes and his mouth have been superglued shut _and_ there’s a bullet wound in the back of his head, no exit wound so it’s still in there. It’s what I’m determining as the cause of death since that’s where all this blood seems to have come from since all his other wounds have already been sewn up, which is bothering me.”

Jack nodded slowly, his eyes raking over the body before him trying to think of how any of this could have happened to this guy in such a small neighbourhood and somehow no one noticed.

“It’s almost like whoever was holding him wanted to keep him alive for a long time. They were torturing him.” He felt the urge to light up another cigar but he’d gotten in heaps of trouble for doing that in the past in other crime scenes. Annie nodded and sighed, moving to stand up and brush the soil from the flower bed off her slacks.

“I’ll send you the full report once I’ve gone over everything, and I’ll make sure that ballistics process that bullet as soon as possible,” she reached down to give him a hand up and he took it, “but in the meantime, you should probably get to questioning everyone on the street, starting with our little audience over there.”

Jack rolled his eyes and tutted, pulling his gloves off and shoving them into the hands of the nearest uniform “Since when are you giving me orders, Cline? I’m the detective here.”

She gave him a look and took her own gloves off, “Exactly, so start doing your job so I can start doing mine.”

* * *

Jack slapped his notepad onto his desk with an angry sigh, and flung his coat onto the back of his chair.

“What’s up with you?” He heard as he slumped down into his chair. Over the top of his monitor, Jack saw Victor peering at him. Victor was the only guy in the entire office he could tolerate because they’d joined at relatively the same time. They were both old men who’d seen too much and respected each other. Jack might even consider him a friend if he wasn’t so god damn nosy.

“I just spent all fucking day asking every one of those rubber necking idiots if they saw or heard anything suspicious last night but none of them did.” He spat, and started angrily gathering up all the coffee mugs he’d left out on his desk that morning. Victor winced and leaned back in his chair, the thing creaking under his weight.

“Yikes. Is this that new case you got, then? The one where the guy got shot dead in some old crone’s petunias?”

Jack wheezed a laugh, “You have such a way with words. But yeah, that’s the one.” He waddled to the station kitchen with his 5 used coffee mugs stacked precariously in his arms and tried to get them into the sink without smashing any of them.

“How the hell did none of them hear anything? The guy must have been in a lot of pain from what I heard.” Victor rose his voice to be heard from across the station and Jack rolled his eyes as he poured out all the cold coffee. Why did no one do this before he got back? Like any regular person would, he left the mugs for someone else to clean and walked back to his desk, shrugging at Victor as he sat down.

“Hell if I know. Might’ve had something to do with the fact that his god damn mouth was glued shut.”

Victor winced.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta do background checks on all these neighbours until Cline can get me the full autopsy report, so-” Jack made a shooing motion with his hand and was already opening his notepad and booting up the PC he never fully learnt how to use.

All in all, there were only five houses in the cul-de-sac and Jack figured the guy must have escaped from one of them seeing as though he wouldn’t have gotten very far with that many injuries and his eyes glued shut.

Obviously, the first one he’d questioned had been the old lady who’d called in, who wasn’t too pleased with the whole ordeal now that not only did she have a dead body on her lawn, she now had police treading all over her grass and bystanders invading her privacy, as she’d said. While she was incredibly annoying, Jack didn’t see her as the killing type, especially with the fuss she was making about all the blood. He put her down as a “maybe”, got her details, and moved on.

He did the same with the others, the usual hackneyed routine he had to do every time this happened. Same shit, different day, right? All in all, there was an elderly couple, who were far nicer than the old biddy in the first house, who just wanted to know what was going on and if there was anything they could do to help and Jack said no, unless they could tell him if they heard or saw anything last night, which they didn’t. Then there was this family of four; two tired looking, middle aged parents and their overly curious 3 and 5-year-old’s who also, conveniently, saw nothing. The young power couple next door who were in the muddle of people trying to get a good nosy look at the gore? Also nothing.

It wasn’t until he got to the last house, which was weirdly quiet given the commotion outside, that Jack started to feel uneasy.

It was the same as all the others but… not. He couldn’t quite place the feeling, but it wasn’t good and Jack almost always listened to his gut.

He knocked on the door and didn’t even hear any footsteps before it was opened by a petite redhead. It was like she was waiting for him to knock. Jack blinked and stared at her before collecting himself and flashing his badge.

“Detective Fiddler, I’m with the homicide department. I was just wondering if I could ask you a few questions?”

Behind her he could see a man lean out from an open doorway.

“Who is it, Ash?” He called.

The redhead, now identified as Ash, fumbled and turned to look at the man in the doorway and made and jerking motion with her head, like she was trying to get him to come to the door with her. Jack raised an eyebrow and looked between them as the man paused a moment before shuffling into the hallway and clumping towards the front door. Ash turned from him as he started walking and stared back at Jack who felt suddenly uncomfortable being stared at with such wide, green eyes.

“Chris, this is detective Fiddler, he wants to ask us about… uh…” She looked over Jack’s shoulder at the mess of police cars, bystanders, and just general chaos across the street, “That. I’m assuming.”

Chris, who was almost comically taller than his companion, also looked behind Jack at the mess back there and then back at Jack, nodding his head slowly.

“Yeah, yeah, of course, whatever you need, sir.” His voice was soft and friendly, but it almost sounded forced; like an actor in a soap opera trying to sound concerned and pushing it just a little too far. Jack nodded curtly at them both and quickly glanced behind them into the house. It looked fairly clean with the right amount of jumble you’d expect from a young couple living together. Shoes were messily thrown near the door and he could see some cardboard boxes a little further down the hallway before it split into another hallway going left to right.

“Last night someone was killed on the front lawn of the house across from you.” Jack stated. He’d always found that being upfront in his line of work made things a lot quicker and easier. For him, anyway. Chris raised his eyebrows and let out a breath, seemingly not knowing what to do with the information, while Ash sucked in a breath and started spinning the ring on her finger. A wedding ring, Jack noted. Chris reached up and lightly touched the shorter woman’s shoulder in comfort and she immediately rested one of her hands on top. They quickly glanced at each other.

“Oh, wow, I… That’s, uh… that’s horrible…” Ash mumbled, almost too herself and Jack tried not to furrow his eyebrows. Every other person he’d spoken to had gasped in shock and horror, like their worst nightmares had come true and they realised that their quiet, little neighbourhood had finally got a taste of something they only ever see happen on TV. But these two… these two were barely even paying attention to him; they kept glancing over Jack’s shoulder and then back at each other and had just acted like the detective had only troubled them with a mild inconvenience. He was getting the willies just being near them.

“Yes, I’m sorry to have to tell you,” Jack forced out and flipped open his notebook, “but I’m going to have to take your information while we work on things, and then I’m just going to ask a few questions, nothing too strenuous.” Jack quickly jotted down the address in his chicken scratch and listened as they named themselves and their numbers.

Ashley and Christopher Hartley. Young newlyweds, from what he could gather.

While he wrote it all down he could still see them, watching the scene behind him unfold and he felt another uneasy feeling well in his gut. If they were so curious about what was going on why didn’t they go outside with the rest of the street?

“So,” he stated, a bit too loudly, “did either of you see or hear anything last night? Around 3am?”

Ashley’s mouth twitched and it looked almost like a smile before she reached up to scratch her nose, “No, no… we were both in bed.”

“Yeah, and we both work pretty late, so we were both pretty much knocked out.” Chris continued, letting out a huff of a laugh. Jack narrowed his eyes at both of them.

“Right.” Jack muttered, writing ‘asleep?’ into his notepad and underlining the question mark a little harder than necessary, “Well, thank you both for your time, sorry to have disturbed you.” There was probably more he could have asked them but he kind of just wanted to get out of there. The atmosphere on that porch was suffocating him. There was something definitely off about the two of them. He didn’t hear them say anything as he turned to walk away, stuffing his notepad into his jacket pocket. Until he got to the middle of the garden path.

“How did he die?” Chris’ voice followed after him.

Jack froze and felt his shoulders bunch up, tense. He turned his head to see the both of them, still fucking stood there, watching him with curious expressions. Jack licked his lips and collected himself.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

Chris nodded slowly and Ashley fiddled with her ring again.

Jack quickly turned on his heal and sped back to the police tape where he, ironically, felt a lot safer. He muttered a quick word to a uniform and headed off to his car, all the while feeling eyes burning into the side of his head. He already had the cigar ready in his mouth as he opened the car door and dropped into the seat. He could feel some form of nausea welling in his stomach.

He’d never mentioned that the body was a ‘he’.

So now, here he sat at his desk, having to painstakingly do background checks on all the neighbours even though he already had prime suspects number one and two laid out in his mind but no, he had to go through every option first before jumping to conclusions. At least, that’s what the patronising asshole teaching the course he had to take on “anger management” had said. It didn’t matter that they knew things about the case that no one else should have known at the time; it didn’t matter that they lived in the house literally, directly across from the crime scene; and it didn’t matter that his gut was doing all sorts of back flips trying to tell him that those two creepy lovebirds knew _something_.

He felt a niggling sensation in the back of his mind and furrowed his eyebrows again, rubbing his temples as the beginnings of a migraine started.

There was something about this case, about these addresses, that reminded him of something.

He immediately gave up using the computer, stupid thing, and started rummaging through the many sheets of paperwork on his desk. Under yet another coffee mug that he’d somehow missed, with a now large coffee stain on it, was a map with 10 messy biro marks on it. Even with his blind eye Jack could tell the correlation between them all. He reached for a pen and pulled the map down next to his notepad and quickly found the address of the body he’d just been at. He marked it on his map and threw down his pen with a sigh, leaning back in his chair and pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes.

They were linked, all of them.

It was within the 10 mile radius.


	2. Autopsy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry this ones so short, i felt bad for not getting more written so i just wanted to get this part published
> 
> looks like jacks theories dont go down too well

The autopsy report was as bad as he thought it was going to be.

There wasn’t much more than what Annie had initially observed but having it all in writing seemed to solidify how much this guy had actually been through. Despite the missing kidney, chopped off fingers, glued shut eyes and mouth, deep cuts all over his body and excessive bruising, the gaping bullet wound in the back of his head turned out to actually be the case of death and not sheer trauma or internal bleeding. It made Jack cringe to know that this guy was conscious as all of this was happening to him and only got put out of his misery with a swift bullet to the back of the head.

Annie didn’t let him smoke in the morgue either (“What do they care, they’re dead?” “Because those are the fucking rules, Jack.”) so he had no way to distract himself while looking down at the slightly cleaner body of the guy they’d picked up. She’d managed to clean all the blood off him and now all that remained was the ugly purple bruises that littered his torso and legs. The lacerations crisscrossed along his arms, chest, thighs. A particularly nasty looking one stretched from one side of his stomach to the other but like Annie had said, all of them had been stitched back up. Jack grimaced and turned away from the corpse on the slab and walked over to Cline who was typing away at her computer.

“So you confirmed that his fingerprints have been burnt off?” He asked, leaning against the table she was working on.

“Yes.” She answered curtly, eyes fixed on the screen. She was still filling in the last of the paperwork. Without looking away, she reached over to a manila folder beside her and handed it to him, “I’ve already taken a cell sample to test to see if we’ve got him in the system already.”

Jack flipped open the file and started reading the report, humming in response.

“If you’re little theory is right, he should be.” Annie leaned back in her chair and cracked her knuckles, flexing her fingers to work out the cramps from typing for so long. Jack breathed a laugh. She’d been the only person he’d told about the correlation of the disappearing people and this murder so it figures she’d feel the need to make fun of him a bit. He glanced at her to see her grinning at him.

“Keep laughin’, I know that I’m right. There’s too many similarities for it to be a coincidence. And you know how I feel about coincidences.”

“Yeah, you think they don’t exist.”

“Because they _don’t_.” Jack left it with a note of finality and he could see Annie roll her eyes as he continued to read the file. He furrowed his eyebrows, “I don’t know why you bother givin’ me these things. I can’t read half the words you use.”

Annie let out a long sigh and stood up from her chair, snatching the file out of Jack’s hands and whipping out her glasses from her lab coat pocket in one smooth motion. She walked back over to the body and Jack dutifully followed. She walked around to the one side of the slab and Jack stayed on the other, watching her as she dramatically cleared her throat.

“For starters, I was right about everything.” She began and Jack tutted.

“You kind of have to be in this line of work, Cline.”

“His kidney _was_ removed,” She continued, like he hadn’t said anything, “and it was done with… scary precision. It’s like something I’d expect from an expert surgeon.”

He could detect the discomfort in her tone. He wasn’t the only one who was unnerved by this case.

“All the wounds were stitched up with white cotton thread and a standard sewing needle, but it’s the kind you can get in any craft or dollar store so it doesn’t really narrow down our search. Also, the glue used to close his eyes and mouth is just regular super glue. It’s like whoever did this just did it on a whim with what they had available.”

Jack grunted and shook his head firmly, “I’m telling you, this guy’s linked to those missing ten. They probably did this to every other fucker they got, already had the tools ready. And I already know who did it, I just need evidence.”

Annie set the file down on the slab behind her and leant against it, glaring at him over her glasses. He’d also told her about the creepy couple across the road to the site and she didn’t seem to appreciate him jumping to conclusions the same way his superiors didn’t, “Look, I’m willing to believe you when you say that these are all linked; the similarities are staggering. But you can’t just pin it all on those two because they ‘give you a weird vibe’.” She put air quotes around that and Jack pressed his mouth together in a scowl.

“It’s not just that, Annie. They _knew_ stuff. What kind of person just doesn’t react when you tell them someone got fucking murdered across the street from them?”

Annie groaned and moved her glasses to the top of her head, “The stuff that they _knew_ was that the body was a guy, they could have just guessed that! And maybe they were just in shock, death does that to people.”

Jack felt his anger flare but bit his tongue. He knew that people weren’t going to believe him with such little proof, but it was frustrating none the less, “Okay, fine. Just tell me the rest.”

Cline stared at him a second longer before sighing and pulling her glasses down and picking up the file.

“Right… so, the bullet was still lodged in his head; a straight shot from the back of his head to the frontal lobe where it stopped. It was a 9mm calibre bullet.” She pulled around her set of trays on wheels and gestured to the metal dish with the now cleaned bullet resting in it. She pointed with her pen at the perimeter of it and Jack leaned in close to get a look, “If you look here, you’ll see the scuff marks which means it was shot from a silencer.”

“Any idea how far from?” Jack didn’t look up at her and tried to focus his one working eye on it. He heard her blow out a breath.

“I’d say about 20 meters? It could have come from anywhere on the street.”

Jack stood up straight and gave her a look to which she responded with a scowl.

“On the street, you say? Hm. From the way his body had fallen and the direction of the bullet that sounds like it could have come from right across the road, at Mr and Mrs Creepy’s house.”

“Okay, look,” Annie leaned forward with a dangerous tone in her voice, “I get it, okay? You’ve been working on this case for months and found nothing, you think you find a lead based on what? A few stray bits of evidence? That’ll never hold up in court. Maybe you’re right, but if you want to peruse this you’re gonna have to get better evidence than what your gut says and a bullet with no prints on it. You won’t even be able to get a search warrant with this.” She gestured to the body that lay in front of them and Jack sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“It’s not just that, okay? What about these things?” Jack pointed at the heart shaped cuts in the guy’s chest, “You think some random jackass with a knife did this? Those two have got some weird Bonnie and Clyde shit going on and all I need from you is one cell of evidence from them and I’m set.”

Cline nodded slowly and had a look on her face like she was talking to a lost cause, “Well, you’re going to have to look somewhere else because I didn’t find any foreign DNA.”

“…what?”

“I didn’t find anything. Not a speck of that blood was anyone else’s but his, and I already scraped under his nails and found nothing, not a single hair. So you’re going to have to find something else because otherwise I can’t help you, Jack.”

“How is that even _possible_?” Jack seethed.

“I don’t know, alright? There’s only so much I can do, Jack.” She sounded as frustrated as him, “Whoever’s doing this knows enough about it that they can cover their tracks which means that they don’t leave anything for me to find which means that I can’t help you!”

From behind him, Jack heard a sound come from the computer and snapped his head around to glare at it like it was purposefully interrupting them. Annie sighed and rounded the slab, giving Jack a look as she walked to her computer desk. She clicked around for a bit while Jack slowly sauntered back over and watched as her eyebrows furrowed as she read whatever was on the screen.

“Okay, so the cell sample came back and I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that this guy is already in our system.” She seemed almost annoyed, but turned the monitor to face Jack so he could get a look at what she’d seen.

Apparently the guy’s name was Brandon Evans, and he’d already had the pleasure of being admitted into the stations computer for rape allegations that were dropped by the girl filing them because of unknown circumstances. Jack rubbed his forehead and dragged his hand down to cover his mouth, not knowing what to do now. Well, he was right, for one thing. At least it was confirmed. Now he just needed Ashley and Chris to confess and he’d be golden. Obviously, not that easy but a man can dream.

“So,” Annie started, “you got what you wanted. One of your theories has been proven right.”

He nodded slowly.

“Could you print that off for me? I need it for the file.”

“Which file?”

“Both of them.”


	3. Desk Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> holy damn its been a hot minute  
> im so sorry for taking so long with this chapter, its just hard to work through the world building when i want to get onto the good stuff  
> i think this fics gonna be longer than i planned tbh, but i guess thats good for you guys
> 
> jack finds out that our lovely couple have some friends that could be of great help to his case

Despite all the shit he was getting for it, from both Annie _and_ his superiors, Jack was still putting all his effort into the gruesome twosome and finding something, literally anything, against them just to have an excuse to look into them more.

He’d spent the majority of his day at his desk on the computer, furrowing his eyebrows as he tried to figure out all the search fields and where to put what information. He was too good to call IT services, and god forbid he ask one of the other idiots on this floor how to do it. He’d never live it down.

Thankfully, after the computer had spent an annoyingly long time showing him that little, blue, spinning circle, the young couple were already in the computers system. It was, albeit, for underage drinking and speeding violations from their teenage years and the information about them that came up was outdated, but it was a start. It gave him an excuse to look into them more, even if it was a flimsy one, but he could live with that.

He noted, with mild curiosity, that they both had different addresses and figured that these minor offenses would have happened before they moved in together. He jotted down the addresses just in case he wanted to check them out. He wasn’t supposed to be doing any of this and he didn’t want to risk badgering their parents, accusing their children of being murders when they very well might report him for misconduct or abuse of power or something. He made quick, chicken scratch notes but there wasn’t much he could go on.

He pulled out his map of the area and found their old addresses on it.

Surprise, surprise, they were within the 10-mile radius.

It wasn’t even a shock at this point, he was just getting frustrated because he knew, he _knew_ , he was right about this but without physical evidence he couldn’t bring them in for questioning or look in their house or anything.

Jack grumbled under his breath and took a swig of his coffee. It was his third one in the past two hours and his bladder felt like it was about to explode. He felt like he was punishing himself, like he couldn’t leave his desk until he’d found something to show for it.

“You doin’ okay, buddy?”

Jack twitched his head up slightly and saw Victor staring at him from over the desk divider, an arm leaning against it. He looked concerned and Jack barked a dry laugh.

“No, I’m not.”

“You still lookin’ into those two?” Victor questioned, flicking his head towards the computer screen while his eyes trailed to the mess of paper and maps in front of him. Jack put his coffee down and sighed, long and hard, resting his head on one hand. He pressed into his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and tried to resist the urge to be a sarcastic fucker. He knew Victor meant well, but he’d just been having an off day (week, year, life).

“Yes.” Was the blunt reply.

Victor sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, “Look, Jack, I’m gonna be straight with you-" Jack chuckled at that, “-about this whole thing. I believe you, okay? I do, but you can’t just focus on them right now. You’ve got other suspects to look into, and if the chief finds out that you’re wasting all your time on just two of ‘em? You’re gonna get moved to desk duty again. Remember last time?”

“I don’t give a _shit_ , Vic.” Jack whispered with venom, anger directed at nothing in particular, “I know what I know, and I _know_ that bullet’s point of entry was the back of his head, right? So the shot must have been from behind the guy, and what was behind him? Their fucking house.” Jack stabbed a finger at the two mugshots he had up on the screen.

Victor was giving him a look, one of pity and Jack scoffed when he saw it, slumping back in his chair and rubbing his face with his hands. He could feel the raised scar on his eye that no longer worked and felt like screaming into the office. He’d never had anything like this happen before. When he knew he was right, he was right, and when he was right he had the evidence to back it up because there was always evidence. There had to be something he’d missed, there _had_ to be, or he was losing his mind because there’s never been a crime scene with literally nothing to help him.

“Take a break, Jack.” Victor muttered, “Go take a leak, get some food, have a smoke, whatever you gotta do. You need to take a break or you’re gonna kill yourself over this shit.” He slapped the divider once and sat back down in his own seat while Jack rubbed his face again and stood abruptly.

“You’re right. You’re right, I gotta… clear my mind for a bit.” Jack nodded once, curtly, and grabbed his coat from his chair. He hadn’t had lunch yet anyway.

* * *

With an empty bladder, a full stomach, and a slightly less stormy mind, Jack sat back at his desk and cracked his knuckles. Victor nodded at him once in greeting as he sat down with a mug of coffee and a folder under one arm.

He’d tried to not think about the case while he was out scoffing down a burger, hoping that when he came back his mind wouldn’t be clouded by his annoyance and he’d be able to calmly and rationally think about what he was going to do about his predicament. Well, as calmly and rationally as he could do it. He wasn’t exactly known for his cool temperament.

Looking through the files on his screen again, Jack noticed that some of the same names kept cropping up again and again. The same few people that were associated with these two, the same few people who were charged at the same time for their petty underage drinking and drug possession, presumably their friends. He clicked through to each of their profiles, jotting down their names and phone numbers; he could try getting one of the tech guys to reverse search them, see if they could get more recent addresses.

All in all, there were 8 other kids linked to them and Jack huffed at the thought of having to go through each and every one of them.

Jack clicked his pen in thought, eyes narrowing on the screen as he grumbled to himself. Something else caught his eye.

The same person had bailed them out each and every time. A Robert Washington? The name sounded familiar. For starters, it was the same last name as three of the links he’d found; Joshua, Hannah, and Bethany Washington. Probably a bunch of whiny rich kids who got their father to bail them and their friends out of sticky situations. Jack scowled again and picked his brain because it wasn’t the only reason the name was familiar.

Jack opened Google and typed Robert Washington in with stiff fingers only to lean back in his chair and groan at what came up.

Bob Washington, the famous horror movie director.

“You’ve gotta be shittin’ me…” he muttered.

What a fucking coincidence that a horror movie director would somehow have a link to such a grizzly crime scene. If he stuck to his guns on this one, Jack was pretty sure he’d be able to uncover something deeper going on here, there had to be. He sat back up straight in his seat and clicked on the Wikipedia page for the director, scrolling down and – yup, there it was:

Children: (3) Joshua Washington, Hannah Washington, Bethany Washington

He opened each page on a new tab and started begrudgingly reading through them.

Hannah and Bethany were apparently twins and used to have roles in their dad’s movies when they were younger, was among some of the bullshit that didn’t help Jack in any way, shape, or form. Jack didn’t know exactly what he was looking for but he sure as hell wasn’t finding it. Apparently they’ve both since given up acting and moved away to another state so there was no hope in Jack being able to find them and ask them a few questions about their questionable younger years.

Joshua, it seemed, had pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. His page had around about the same information on it, how he used to work on his father’s movies sets as a tech, helping with the special effects and lighting. Frankly, Jack didn’t know why Bob was letting his young children work on the sets of horror movies, only one of which he’d seen and actually liked; far too much blood and gore for him. When you have this kind of job, that kind of stuff starts to wear thin after a while. There were links to their social medias at the bottom but honestly, Jack didn’t feel like getting caught going through the pictures and minute comments of young adults in the middle of a police station when he should be investigating a murder.

Josh’s page didn’t say anything about him leaving the state, or even the city, and only hinted at the fact that he still worked on the sets of his father’s movies but aside from that there was nothing much he could go on.

As for the others…

He brought up their files again and looked at each of them as if they were going to spring some new information on him.

 _Well,_ he thought, _famous kids might have famous friends… better look up the rest of them…_

The first kid, Matthew Taylor, came up linked to a college site. Apparently, after being the star line backer at his high school he’d gone on to doing the same at his alma mater. In fact, the college was so impressed by his athletic ability they’d dedicated a whole page to him and his teammates. Jack scowled. None of this was useful to him. He had a sneaking suspicion the rest of them would be the same but he had to check, leave no stone unturned.

Emily Davis, attended the same college, graduated the same year, summa cum laude, and president of her sorority. Again, the page didn’t give him any information beyond that, and it didn’t help him any. Jack grumbled again.

Jessica Riley. Nothing much came up about her, just her name listed on a modelling agency's website and a few example shots. Jack quickly closed that tab once he’d opened it, feeling his heart jump into his throat in shock. _Definitely_ not something he wanted to be opening in the middle of a police station. He’d have to look into the agency on his own time for a number to call. They’d have her address and he’d finally have somewhere to start. But not now.

Michael Munroe. Another familiar name. He’d run for representative at one point and even with his charm and charisma, his age had been a key factor in him not getting the vote; no one thought he had the experience yet. Jack always thought he looked annoyingly cocky on those posters he saw at the time.

And that left the last one, a Samantha Giddings. She wasn’t in as many of the shared cases as the others but she might know something. Her name didn’t come up with much, just another Instagram page which said how she was traveling the world, hiking and climbing her way to changing the world. Jack rolled his eyes and groaned. Another one of these vegan hippy types, what a load of shit. Not that it mattered. From her latest picture it looked like she was trying to save some endangered species in the middle of a jungle or whatever the fuck; she wasn’t in the country so he couldn’t contact her.

Which meant he only had two possible people he could talk to, the only two he could get the numbers of; Munroe and Riley.

Well, he’d already established that Riley was going to have to wait until _later_ , but Munroe he could do. Quickly finding a number on his website, Jack tapped them stiffly into the phone on his desk, impatiently listening to the dial tone. After a few seconds a perky voice answered.

“Mr Munroe’s office?”

Jack almost laughed, of course he’d have an assistant.

“Hello, this is Detective Jack Fiddler. I was wondering if I could speak to Mr Munroe about an ongoing case?” Being polite was a formality, if he had it his way he’d demand to set a meeting with him immediately, “We have reason to believe someone he knows was involved in the incident.”

He heard the woman on the line stutter and shuffle some papers about.

“Um, please hold.”

Jack growled as almost mockingly relaxing music started playing through the earpiece. He began clicking his pen in frustration again, wishing he could go out and have another stogie to calm his nerves. It was a minute or two before someone actually picked up again, and the voice was a completely different one.

“Hello?” He sounded worried.

“Is this Mr Munroe?” Jack asked curtly, his exceedingly thin patience already gone.

“Y-Yes, that’s me. But call me, Mike, please. Since you’re calling on such delicate terms, sir…”

“Right. Mike. I was just wondering if I could come down and have a chat with you about this case, as if does involve people you may know.”

“Yes, yes, of course… um, did somebody… die?” Jack felt his eyebrow twitch at that. Was there a reason this guy's mind immediately jumped to murder? Didn't politicians normally worry about sex scandals or tax evasion and stuff like that?

“Yes, somebody died. But it’s not anybody you know.”

“… I-I don’t understand, why are you calling me then?”

Jack rolled his eyes and suppressed the urge to growl. Jack didn’t know if it was just because he was annoyed already or if this guy truly wasn’t getting it.

“They are suspects in the case, I was just wondering if you could tell me a bit more about them, anything could be helpful.”

“They? There’s more than one of them?” Suddenly, Mike’s voice sounded a bit more panicked and Jack felt like he'd just hit a nerve. Did he know something?

“Yes,” Jack answered slowly, glancing down at the two names circled in the middle of his notepad like he didn’t have them memorised by now from staring at them for hours, listening closely as he said “a Christopher and Ashley Aarons. We’ve found evidence that you knew them during your less… favourable encounters with the police.” Jack chuckled dryly. Mike didn’t say anything to that but Jack heard his breath hitch as he said their names. He _definitely_ knew something.

Yet he still didn’t say anything. Jack could practically hear the cogs turning in his head, “Mr Munroe?"

Another moment of dead silence.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, detective.” His voice was suddenly stern and flat, resolute.

“Excuse me?” Jack ground out.

“I can’t help you. I didn’t know them that well at the time,” _Liar_ , “and I certainly don’t know them know.”

“Didn’t know them that well?” Jack snapped, “Then why is it, _Mike_ , that you were involved in several underage drinking busts that they were also involved in?” He was trying not to raise his voice. He really wasn’t supposed to be doing this, he was only getting away with it now because no one had noticed yet.

“I went to a lot of parties in my youth, _sir_. The chances of running into the same people more than once are quite high, wouldn’t you say?” That sounded like a challenge to him and if it were possible, steam probably would have started billowing out from Jack’s nose like a cartoon bull.

“If I find out that you’re withholding information from a homicide police investigation, Munroe, I can bring you down for obstructing an investigation.”

“Anything else you’d like to ask me can be done through a meeting. Talk to my assistant, but I’m a very busy man. Don’t count on it. Goodbye, detective.”

The long, piercing note hit Jack’s ears before he could come up with a retort.

He inhaled through his nose and slammed the phone down, jostling his desk. Victor popped up again and gave him a look of “what the hell are you doing?” and Jack didn’t have the energy or the patience to deal with him or reassure him or _look_ at him.

That smug fuck, _Mike_ , knew something. But now he couldn’t pester him about it without risking the bastard reporting him to his superiors and then he’d really be in the shitter. The only option left was this Jessica girl and if the same thing happened again he’d be back to square one.

This was such bullshit.

**Author's Note:**

> i didn't proof read this so any spelling errors or grammar mistakes or if it just doesnt make sense, im sorry, its been a while since i wrote anything on this scale


End file.
